You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 293.
Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. And now, your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.
Well, hello.
Today is a very special day. We have my friend that I love madly on the podcast today, but we don't have her on, because she's my friend. Although we could do an episode on what it's like to be Brooke Castillo's friend.
Yes, we will do that episode.
But we'll do that another day. We are having her on the podcast today to talk about entrepreneurship and what it's like to be a founder of a business and to try and run an organization. And let me just tell you, the past couple years, I have been learning how to do that with Kris by my side.
And I feel like I have come out the other end with some very solid, amazing things that I have co-created and debated and kind of come to the conclusion with Kris. But first, before we get started, Kris, you've been on the podcast before, haven't you?
I have not. Never? Never.
Okay, so you have to do the full intro-duction. Tell us about you and do it quickly.
Tell us all the details in a short amount of time. I was born. Please don't.
Okay, we will do that.
I'm a Master Certified Coach with Brooke Castillo through The Life Coach School, and I have been coaching since about 2005, actually, even before you certified me, because I went to your first workshop. I was so smart. Why can't I lose weight?
Isn't that crazy? My very first workshop I ever did. You were there.
I was there. I'm just a total groupie.
From the beginning.
From the beginning. But I took everything you taught me in there, and I, of course, lost weight, and I also was a manager at the time. So I just took it all, and I reconfigured it, and I taught them all what you were at the time calling limited beliefs, and we just did all this work.
And then that took on a life of its own in the company that I worked in. And then I did coaching for years there, and started my business about seven years ago. So I have a coaching practice where I coach female entrepreneurs on how to lead, how to manage, how to deal with all the human capital issues that happen in a business.
And I love it, and I love my clients, and I love the work that I get to do, because I just see how not knowing how to manage people and not knowing how to manage a business is such a barrier to you getting your work into the world. And I believe female entrepreneurs are such a source of incredible power and value for the world that I want that roadblock to get out of the way. So that's what I spend my time doing.
So we decided that the best way to kind of cover this material would be to talk about the mistakes that entrepreneurs make as they're building their companies. Allegedly, I made a few, a few of my own mistakes. And I have to say, I laugh about it now, but I have to say it was probably the most painful thing that I've ever had to go through in terms of coming to terms with myself and my love of my business and growing up into what we call entrepreneurial maturity.
Before I did this work, I felt like I stepped into emotional maturity, but then there was the next layer, which was entrepreneurial maturity. And when you're not into that level of maturity, you make so many mistakes that cause so much unnecessary suffering. So what we decided to do is, I came up with three mistakes, Kris came up with three mistakes.
We're gonna talk about them today. We're also gonna introduce you to our program that we just co-created called Entrepreneurial Management. And it's a program that we created as a gift to all of our sisters who are trying to build businesses.
And we get so many questions and we see so much suffering around this that we decided to create a program together, which was a blast. And I have to say, I just watched the whole thing to like audit it. And it's so good.
It is like I kept texting Kris, I'm like, I'm learning so much from us. I'm learning so much from these ideas and these concepts. So we've created this entire program.
It's amazing. We'll tell you about that at the end.
I'm so excited.
So let's get started. Why don't you start? And you're going to talk mostly kind of from your client's perspective that the mistakes that you see your clients making, I'll talk about the mistakes I made personally because they were epic and I can talk to them.
Very first-person-ish. And our hope is that you guys will hear it, maybe hear yourself in there and recognize that there's nothing wrong with you. You're just going through the exact process you need to go through to become an entrepreneur.
So why don't you go ahead and start?
Okay. Well, the first one I wanted to talk about was a combination of keeping people too long, being too nice, not holding people accountable.
Okay. Right.
And doing that because, not for the totally wrong reasons, which is like, they've worked for me forever, they were here with me when I started, they're a really nice person, they know my business really well, they know me, they can work with me, right? Which I hear. So that's kind of like this little pocket of reasons why I don't fire people that really don't contribute to my business, not holding people accountable.
I just watch this every single first, every single client when I first start working with them, there is always, depending on the size of their business, one of these people were seven. And it's hugely impactful to people's results, the business's results, the founders' joy in their business. And I qualify it as a mistake because I think our reasons for not letting people go are not well considered.
They're not really in the best interest of the business. They're the best interest of my comfort as the business owner, right? Like, oh, it's uncomfortable.
How, what will I say to her? How will I let her go? She's gonna cry.
Well, I mean, let's think about it for a minute. There is never a time really when we are ever confronted with having to end a relationship in a certain way, unless there's something terrible happening. So if you think about it, when you break up with a boyfriend, or when you break up with a friend, or you want someone not to be in your life anymore, it's usually because something epic has happened, and you're really angry, and it's easy to end, you're just like, I never want to see you again.
Yes.
But having to fire someone because of they're either not at the point where they can grow with your business, or they've done something that just isn't in line with your business and still loving the person and wanting the person in your life and caring about the person, but being able to let them go is a skill set that none of us know how to do. How do we love someone and tell them they're not a good fit for our business, and we're letting them go without taking it personally? It's a really challenging thing to learn how to do.
And so the mistake is most people just don't do it instead of learning the skill of how to do it.
Right. And it really is, I know you and I allegedly might have talked about this sometimes, is like, it just drags the business, right? It's like you have this weight that you're pulling with you and you can't advance to the next level when you're bringing people along who are no longer suited for what you're trying to achieve.
Yeah, because it affects the whole energy of the whole team. It affects you, it affects, and you know, I say this a lot to Kim, you know, she's super kind, lovely person, very non-confrontational, and I'm always saying truth before kindness. And for her, it helps her to tell the truth, because a lot of times we feel like the truth isn't kind.
And the truth, I think, is always kind. It's way better than talking behind someone's back. So I think learning how to fire someone is one of, and fire them in a proper, lovely way, yes, is one of the most important things that you can learn.
And the mistake, if you don't do it, will really harm your business, and you'll end up with a culture that isn't productive and isn't efficient. So that's a really good one.
Yep.
Let me tell you what my first one was. Okay. Hiring for problems instead of solutions.
Oh my gosh. I remember the day you called me, and you were like, Oh, I figured it out. I figured out you were so excited because you had this realization.
So I'm sorry.
Go ahead. No, it's so good. I had this realization that I had this philosophy that, Oh, I have a problem.
I don't have enough time. I have issues. I have customer service issues.
I have travel issues, whatever these issues are. I need to hire someone to come in and solve these problems. And so I would try to hire people and I'd be like, Hi, welcome to the Life Coach School.
Here's all my problems. Please solve them. Which in retrospect is insane to expect someone, I can't even solve the problem, but I want you brand new to my company to come in and solve my problems.
And when I recognized, oh, I need to solve the problem, and then I need to hire them to execute the solution, it was so profound for me. It was very bad news, first of all, because I didn't want to have to solve the problem and then train them in the solution. But I recognized that that was the long-term effect.
And by not doing that, I was creating so many issues in my company. I was expecting people to walk into a mess.
And it is such an interesting dilemma because what you're saying, right, is you have to do the work as this very, very, very busy business owner.
Right.
Of figuring out a solution and maybe process that out and identify where the bottlenecks are. And all you want, right, is all we ever want is somebody to come and fix it. And so, yes, that's why when you say it's very bad news, yeah, but once you've identified it and then you bring the right person in to solve it, it's a game changer, right?
That's why, I mean, you just, you're such great evidence. Your business is such great evidence for all of this, right? Because as soon as you figure these things out, like, whoo, exponential growth.
Yeah.
But here's the thing, and it's like, and this is where maturity comes in, is you can't be in a hurry to solve your problems. You can't have the instant gratification of having your problem solved. Listen, if it worked, I would encourage it.
But here's the argument people will make with me. They'll be like, oh no, but I hired someone and they did solve the problem. But here's your new problem, sister.
Now, you're dependent on that person. Exactly.
Exactly.
Even if you got a superstar to come in and solve a problem, what you did is you hired a firefighter. And that person was able to come in and fight your fires for you. But you know what that person is good at?
Fighting fires.
Fighting fires, yeah.
And so they're going to want there to be fires so they can put them out. And you will probably happily create them for them. And that dance becomes a real issue.
When you get employees that don't have any tolerance for fires, it requires you to be more proactive and step up your game and be much more aware of what you're hiring someone to do. And so one of the things we've done in entrepreneurial management is really laid out the process for doing this. So you don't get caught up in throwing people at problems because first of all, it's terrible for the person.
And it's terrible for you because they're never going to be able to do it fast enough or good enough in the way that you expect. And if they do, you're in trouble.
Yeah, well, that, I don't know if you want to move to it, but my second one builds off of this, which is abdicating instead of learning how to delegate, right?
Yes.
So in abdicating, we just building off of what Brooke was just saying, we just bring someone in who knows what the hell they're doing versus what you know, and just give it to them. Please do the thing. And I remember having this very kind of moment too, we were in our millionaire mastermind, and one of the women in the group was talking about her business manager and how she had to go back and consult with her business manager about a decision that we were all asking her to make.
And I had this thought like, she's now become helpless in her own business, because she can't make her own decision about her business. And the reason she can't make her own decision is because she has completely abdicated something. And then to your point, then where a lot of my clients feel hostage to an employee.
Because if that employee leaves, they're the only one, including not even me, who knows how to do whatever is being done. Exactly. And then you're like paralyzed with fear that this person will quit, which is, and that's a whole other story when we start throwing money at them and we start, right?
And we start tolerating all sorts of horrible stuff. But abdicating is not a business strategy. We have to learn how to delegate.
And I'm speaking from my own truth here. Like, I know it's a terrible process. To throw your own unconscious competence down enough to see what you have to ask someone to do, step by step by step.
And that's also something we talk about in entrepreneurial management, right? Right. Like, how to different kinds of delegation.
Yes. We've simplified it, so it's really clean to understand. Like, you're either delegating the process or you're delegating the result, and we teach you how to do that.
And the truth is, in the beginning, we just want to delegate results, right? We want to be able to say to someone, please just take care of this. Please make this go away.
Please make. And what ends up happening is we end up symptom-solving, and we end up putting out current buyers, but not treating the cause of them. And we follow processes that have us working overtime and have us stressed and have us working so hard.
And that can't be sustainable in a business. So that's why we get all of these entrepreneurs coming to us saying, oh my gosh, I want to sell my business. I want out.
This isn't what I wanted. And it's because they haven't slowed down enough to set up their business in a way where it's really true delegation and not complete, just passing the buck to the other people and hoping that they'll take care of it, because you just don't have time to deal with it. Right?
Yep, absolutely. But then you always do. This is the thing that's such, it's such a boomerang.
And I've caught this myself, right? Like you say, I don't have time. So you give it to someone else.
You don't do a good job giving it to them, delegating. You end up spending more time on it in the long run. Like, of course, this is the lesson that we all have to hit our head on about 1400 times.
Yeah, I think before we get it.
And what you realize is when you really learn how to delegate and you take the time to do it, like your employees are so appreciative and they are so happy that they understand what it is that you're wanting them to do. But it also gives them then the independence to try some things. Maybe they won't work out, maybe they will, but it won't be because you didn't give them clear direction on what it is you want and what's expected of them.
So the next one I have, and this is I think the most painful one that so many of us deal with, and I call it indulging in emotion, and specifically frustration, and then taking that out on my employees. I think that was, in the very beginning, I did so much of that, and it was because I wasn't managing my own mind properly. And I felt like it was effective to be angry at people, which in my personal life, in my coaching life, like I know that's not effective, but for sure it was going to be effective in my business?
No. And so I would get frustrated mainly because I hadn't properly delegated, I hadn't properly set up systems, I wasn't hiring the right people, and I was taking it out on the people in my organization. And it was awful for them, of course, but it was also awful for me.
I didn't like who I was anymore. I know so many women can relate to this. All of a sudden, you're just like, is this what it requires for me to run this company, is to be mad all the time because people aren't doing their jobs?
Am I going to ever be able to find the right people that will turn me into a lovely person? That is what we believe, right? If we could just get the smartest people, the people that are just like us, God help us, right, in the business, then we won't have to act this way.
Could you imagine if you hired a Brooke Castillo to work for you?
Dear goodness gracious. And I started really paying attention to this and owning this. And I was in full on entrepreneurial immaturity.
It's like, why won't they do what I want?
Why won't they do what I... Why can't they read my mind? Why can't they just do it the way I would do it?
I remember Kris saying, like, if they could do it the way you do it, they'd have their own business. They wouldn't be working for you. And so you have to remember that the people working for you are not like you and you don't want them to be like you.
You don't want to clone yourself. A lot of people say that, oh, I just want to clone of myself. You really don't because you have too many ideas, you have too much going on.
You need someone that can help you. It's kind of like sweep up behind you, but in a way that's useful for your organization. So I really sat down and had a conversation with myself and I just said, listen, you know, if you can't manage people in a way that you're proud of, you're not managing people.
Oh, that's such a great thing to say.
Thank you. And so I speak about abdication. I just kept trying to hire a CEO to be nice to people.
Oh, yeah.
If I could just get that person. And what that missed, of course, was the cause of my frustration, which was that I wasn't preparing my business properly for the employees. I was expecting them to come in.
And listen, I'm not going to say that I don't have high expectations and that we aren't very demanding and that we don't have a lot of, you know, come up to speed feedback that's very honest. But I'm never frustrating like I was at people. And I'm never letting my emotion get away from myself at people because that is unacceptable to me and it should be unacceptable to all of my employees.
And it is. And it is. And I spent a lot of time apologizing to people for being so frustrated because I just saw that it was completely useless.
It didn't, it made people afraid of me, which that is, that's not useful at all. So I think a lot of people are like that. And I think a lot of people justify it.
I know that I was trying to justify it. Like, well, I'm just mad because they're not doing their jobs.
For sure. It's always, I mean, that's always the justification. And it feels like, like you say a lot, right?
Like we're just telling the news. Like, of course I'm frustrated. Nobody's doing what they're supposed to do.
And it's, like, that's not actually obvious.
Even if it is justified, this is the whole point I made to myself. It's like, even if it is justified, even if someone's doing a terrible job, it's never okay for me to act that way. It doesn't serve any purpose.
It's immature. It's straight immaturity. And it's just me not managing my own mind.
Now, if somebody makes a mistake, I will tell them, hey, this is a mistake, and this is unacceptable. And you are an amazing person. Like, you are a good person.
And I want my employees to always know that I respect them as people, and I love them as people, even if I fire them, whatever. There's your work, and then there's you. And when you can separate that out, then you can do that for yourself, too.
Like, I tell myself, this little fit you're having, you need to have with a coach, and not with your employees. And that was a huge... Thank goodness I had you to call.
And I'd be like, Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya. And then I'd feel better. And I do believe that if you are an entrepreneur who has even one employee, and you don't have a coach, that is so unkind to yourself.
You need a place where you can go and talk with other entrepreneurs, or a coach, or other entrepreneurial women about what the struggle is. The struggle is real, and the struggle is something every single one of us has to go through, because we've never done it before.
Exactly. And that person, just to piggyback, is not your employee.
No.
Because that's one of the other...
You don't want to vent to your own employees.
You can't. You can't. And so many.
That's why we, coming back to my first mistake, now you've built this, whoever your first person is that you hired person, is also your sounding board. Trouble. That is not the relationship you should be having with your employees, which of course makes it impossible for you to fire someone.
If now they all know your deep, dark secrets also. Right?
Or talking to another employee about a different employee. Nobody wants to hear your problems with other employees. You need to figure that out.
And if you can always see that your problems with employees are really always just your problems, your thoughts. Like you're so empowered. It's so awesome.
And then you don't get tied up in not holding your employees accountable or setting expectations or being clear with them. But you're also just not being a total jerk to them, which is so tempting when you're not managing your own mind.
Yeah. You know, one of the one of the examples just to share, this is something that I've watched in people that I've always thought was so weird and inappropriate, is bosses, leaders who say they're not a morning person.
Interesting.
And so they use it as an excuse for why they're horrible to people for the first two hours of the day. I was just not a morning person. And they shut people out and it's like...
Or I'm just in a bad mood.
Yeah, like that's so unacceptable at work. That is not why people come to work to manage your mood. That's not their job.
Right, that's not...
The job is to get results for the company. And so are yours. So snap out of it.
All right, what's your next one?
Treating employees and your team and your company like a family.
But I love my employees.
You can love your employees. You pay them money. Your job as a business is to serve whomever, your client, your vendors, I don't...
whoever those people are. And I have, you know, a belief that the whole attention to energy around employee engagement has taken this discussion a little too far. And now we're overly worried about making these cultures where it's very employee friendly and everybody loves each other.
And we've lost the reason why we go to work, why we have businesses, what we're there to do. We're there to serve the purpose of the business. The businesses, the goal that you have as the custodian of the business, and then the employees that you hire is to ensure that the business is successful.
If we like each other, amazing. If we love each other, great. If we want to hang out and have a potluck, fine.
Just not at the expense of the business.
Exactly. And but when we start to tell people it's a family around here, you were the one who said to me, every family has someone who lives in the basement. Right?
For free.
For free.
And I think you could all listen to this and think, who is the employee member I have on my team right now who's living in the basement for free? Right? Because they're not really working, and they're not really meeting their goals, but you're making up excuses because they've had a rough year or they've had whatever.
And so we get a little distracted. And women especially can fall, I think, a little bit into this because we're nurturing, and we want people to feel like they're part of something. It's very natural for a lot of us to do that, but a lot of times we do that at our own expense and at the expense of the business.
And I think, I mean, I can hear people arguing like, you know, I want to be a woman in my business. I want to be nurturing. I don't want to be cold and calculating.
I don't think I have to become that way in order to run my business. And here's what I want to say to you all. When you say that your business is a family, and when you say that you love everyone, you have to do a lot of pretending in that situation, because, which we do in our families, don't we?
Thanksgiving.
We're like, hi, Aunt Jane. It's so nice to see you again.
Right?
But this is what we end up doing, because we're trying to preserve the loving energy, and you're in an environment where there has to be a lot of accountability, and there's a lot of failure and a lot of feedback that needs to happen. Inevitably, if your business is growing, there are going to be fails. And you need to be able to tell each other the truth.
And sometimes that doesn't feel comfortable. It feels confronting. It feels like you're risking the relationship.
And if you're a family, you won't want to do that. You'll stop doing that in exchange for that. So listen, I want to be a woman.
I want to be compassionate. I want to be loving. And the way that I do that is by telling my employees the truth.
Here's what my employees know. 100%, you can ask any one of my employees, if I'm upset about something or I don't like the way something was handled, they're going to know about it immediately. I'm not going to be telling someone else.
I'm not going to be talking about how high in their back. I'm not going to be like, hey, can I talk to you privately about something? No, I'm going to be like right in your face, hey, this is what happened.
This is the problem. You're amazing. This isn't.
Let's fix it. And that's it. And that's the difference between what you're willing to do.
You know, the metaphor I like to use, and I got this from Netflix, is we're a team, and people get cut on the team. And the high performers are the ones that stay on the team. And they're the ones who get to play.
Yeah. And if you're not playing or you're not on our team or whatever, we still love you as a person, right? But we're a team, not a family.
And I think that's a really useful metaphor for us to think about, because I think the other thing is, and I see this happening in marriages all the time, where people destroy their marriages so they can leave, right? They make it so it's a terrible fight and there's all these horrible things happening. And it's totally unnecessary to do all that.
You don't have to destroy your relationship with someone in order to fire them. You could just be like, look, here's the expectation. You're not meeting it.
I love you. Goodbye. And that's it.
That's how it can be.
And if you're consistent with that, then everybody knows that. And I think I would agree. I think there is initially people have some resistance because I'm sure we were all taught somewhere that you're supposed to treat people like a family.
But I think there's the point of view that you've brought in, like, OK, I'm going to think about my business as a team. And then you have to get clear about what does that mean to you. And then there's your own style.
Right. So the way that Brooke does that may not be the same way I do that. That doesn't mean like we swing so far and say, well, if you're not treating them like a family, then you must be a cold bitch.
No, of course not. There's warmth and kindness. And I can speak from experience.
Like, I'm sure if you met anybody who worked for me, who wanted to work for me, who stayed, they would tell you that they got a lot of feedback and they always knew that feedback came from love and grace. But I meant it. Right.
And I want people to be able to say after they've worked for me, that they're better, that they grew, that they learned more about themselves. I don't want people to just come and punch in and go home. I have no interest in that.
But you have to really do that thought work as a leader and really think about what are you doing here? What are you building? Did you just start a business and put a sign on the door figuratively or literally because you wanted to employ people?
Right.
No.
Or did you start a business?
That was not the plan.
But we forget that. And then we start creating the business about the employment experience. I'm like, no, you started a business to do this thing in the world.
What's happening? You're getting distracted. Well, yeah.
And people will say, oh, she's been with me forever. And we love each other and we fought through this together. And I wouldn't have gotten here without her.
And all of that is true.
Absolutely.
And now we go. And now we go to the future. And I think it's important, like what you said, when you give people direct feedback and you help them by setting expectations for their performance and holding them to that, those people will grow in that environment.
I just had someone on my team just say, yeah, this was very hard, but I love the person that I am. I love how much I've grown. I love how much I've learned.
But I want to be clear, my third mistake was the idea that you can develop people. And listen, when you work in a corporation that has a big budget and has lots of space on the team, and has, you know, less demanding expectations, people away all the time, you really do have the opportunity to develop employees and take them through and educate them in a lot of ways. When you're an entrepreneur with a lean organization, you cannot hire for potential.
You cannot hire someone in the hopes that you will develop them because you do not have the time to do that. So you need to set up your organization so people can develop themselves. And you need to hire people that are able to develop themselves.
They're resourceful enough that they want to become leaders of their own life and of their own career. And not have you explaining everything to them and walking them through every single step of their job because it creates a dependency on you that prevents growth actually. So I think one of the mistakes is like, oh, I like this person when you interview them.
I like this person and they're not quite where they need to be, but I can develop them. I can bring them. It's kind of like marrying for potential.
He isn't making any money right now.
Don't do it.
I think he could.
You know, I think he will become the person I want him to be. It's not a good thing to do. It's unfair to the people that you're hiring and it's totally unfair for you as an entrepreneur because that is something you really don't have the time to do.
And so we talk a lot about how to hire to that and for that and to put people in jobs where they can develop themselves. You may interview someone for one job and they're not good for that job, but you can see that they could develop themselves in another way. And if you know that you're not going to be able to take the time to develop them, you'll be much more careful in your hiring.
Because sometimes we're just like, do you have a pulse? Are you available?
Can you, do you smile? Because you look nice. You look like you're friendly.
Please come help me. Yeah. And then you think, oh, they've never had any experience with the online business, but I can teach them that.
Don't do that to yourself. Like really, that is not, I would much rather you spend more money to get someone that has the experience, so they can come in and really hit the ground running in terms of the solutions that you're asking them to execute versus having to spend a tremendous amount of time training them.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think that one of the things that I learned from you, and that I know we've put into the Entrepreneurial Management Program is, the conversations that you and I would have would be so powerful because you have such a process mind, right? So you take ideas and then you put them into a process that's super simple, and you've done that in your business and we teach that in the program.
Because you said, we want to hire people not for potential, but for their ability to teach themselves and learn. And because you've learned how to do that in your business, you can bring anyone in and you've got the process in place to help them if they have the willingness and the capability and the intelligence, they can actually learn and do the job because the process is there for them to do that. And that's what so many of us don't have is all of it's in our brain.
We hire someone and we think then we start that whole loop. Well, if I could just get someone to read my mind, then they'll be successful. You don't have time.
You don't have time to invest. That would be great.
But here's what I've learned. This is what I've learned. People can read your mind if you write it down.
Right, literally, right?
I can read your mind.
They will read your mind, but you have to write your mind down. Oh my God. That's how you get people to read your mind.
And so that's what I did. I'm like, oh, they can't read my mind when it's still in my mind, but if I take it out and put it in the written form, then they will read it. And every single person listening to this podcast needs to replay that.
Right, it's so good. So that's what I did.
I took everything out of my brain and I put it on paper. And you know what people do now? They read my mind.
They do.
It's magic. I really did turn that into a reality for me. So let me just explain to you guys what we did, like, in this, Kris is loving this concept.
I'm just letting it, I'm like, but then I can attest to every now and then Brooke will call and say, are you fucking kidding me? Right, because she thought she had actually documented her mind and she forgot step seven.
I forgot step seven and then I go back in and I'm like, oh, my mind isn't on paper because if it had been, they would have read it.
It would have been there.
It's taking full responsibility. So let me just go through briefly. First of all, let me just tell you that Kris and I went to Napa to record and do this whole training in the most beautiful house on a vineyard in Napa.
So we are in like the best mood the whole time we're creating this.
And we didn't even drink Chardonnay.
We didn't drink it all. And we had some, Kris was not amused. It was the most fun.
And so I feel like the energy of this course is amazing. I love it. I'm so excited to share it with you.
Let me tell you what the parts are. There's four parts to it, four main parts. There's a lot of content in here, but it's all distilled down.
If you know anything about my trainings, I take all the huge concepts. I delete anything that isn't relevant to entrepreneurs or isn't useful. Like some, there's lots of theories that are cool to hear about, but they're not useful in your business.
We didn't include any in here. So part one is all about you as the founder, because Kris is always talking about how you can't grow your business without growing yourself. And so we really started with that whole concept about, why are you even an entrepreneur in the first place?
Why are you even doing this? Do you remember? It wasn't so you could be in pain all day, every day or stressed all day or waking up in the middle of the night, freaking out about money.
So we talk about you as the founder and your freedom and your money and transferring from a solopreneur into an entrepreneur and your capacity for success. So many of us start freaking out when we start succeeding. And I'm basically just reading this from the table of contents of the course.
Part one is all about you, the founder. Part two is about your beloved company. And we put that word in there on purpose, beloved company, because most people forget, yes, Kris?
Yeah. Like, remember, remember you want to love your company.
Yeah.
We want to love our company, not hate our company, not dread our company, not want to run away from our company.
Right. So fascinating. Most of us get so frustrated with our company that we forget to love it.
And so part two is all about stepping back, remembering why you love it and thinking about it as something separate from you. And there's you as the owner of the company, but then also your company as a separate entity. And separating those out in a way that lets you have a relationship with your business that's healthy.
So in that section, we talk about your vision, your values, your manifesto, your company's money. Right? And the first one, we talked about your money.
This one, we talk about your company's money. And then we talk about your company model, which is what is the model that you have for making money. I know some of this stuff sounds super basic, and it is, but we teach it in a way that you can grasp and utilize.
So it's not just a theory in your brain.
Well, and I think the concepts are basic, but what we're really talking about are the fundamentals. And what I've watched so many of my clients do is they are so good at what they do. You're a perfect example, right?
Exceptional coach, great at creating content. Or if you're a dentist or a florist or an online business owner, you know, product, and then you put it into the world and you make money because you're good at it. But then all this stuff that Brooke just went over so far, you didn't build it.
And so then when you get to the point you have a $2 million business or a $1 million business or a $3 million business, you don't have the foundation to scale and grow and hire the right people.
Well, you don't have the energy because you're exhausted.
Exactly, because you are exhausted. Yeah, so it's all the fundamentals that you can't skip if you want to keep growing your business.
Right, right. Okay, so part one, you as the founder, part two, your beloved company. Part three is your people, because the transition from solo printer to entrepreneur is all about bringing people in.
Yes. And so in this part, we talk about your culture, we talk about the difference between a strategist and a tactician, hiring, onboarding, managing, expectations, accountability, and firing. We did not leave one thing out.
Nope.
It's a genius. And all of those, by the way, all of those are separate 10 to 20-minute videos. We break it up so most videos aren't longer than 10 minutes, so you can watch a video and understand the concept and immediately start applying it in your company.
Yeah. And these are also right there, the video and when we also made the audio available to them, right? So because I know so many of my people are like in the car, walk into work, whatever they're doing when they can digest this great stuff.
So you're going to be able to do that either way.
The other thing that I did as part of this is I just shared everything from my own business. My company manual is in there, how I talk to my employees is in there, all my systems. I really opened the door to the backstage of my business so you can really see.
This isn't just theory. We actually use this every single day. All the things, every single day in our business.
Like just before we got on this call, somebody slacked me a bunch of questions. I turned around and said, fill out a filter. And once you get in the course, you'll figure out what that is.
Like I'm living this and it's making it so it's possible for me to run a $25 million business with only 12 days a week. Yeah, I'm working three days a week. This is how you do it.
And I haven't held anything back. I've given it all to you here. All of my secrets.
Right?
Because I want all the women to make all the money all the time. And we want men to make some of it too.
Just a little. They have a lot already. So we're catching up.
We love them.
We're doing the work. And I want to say, because for your listeners, every now and then there might be somebody broke. I don't know if this is possible.
I could be making it up. Who might think, yeah, but she's Brooke Castillo. It's just easier for her.
So let's just be clear that I have worked with also lots of other women. Who have doubled and tripled their revenue and work less and have hired amazing people using all of this. So this is a process.
Everything we're teaching you is replicatable in your business and we'll get the results if you do the work, right? If you're willing to do the practices, follow it.
And those of you who are like, oh my gosh, that sounds like so much work. I don't have time for it. You're the one that needs it the most.
Yep.
If you don't have time to put this in place, it's because you don't have this in place. That's the truth.
Yes.
Because I have so much time and my business is big. My business is growing. My business has a lot going on, but I have the time because I have the foundation.
Okay, so let's review part one. You is the founder. Part two, your beloved company.
Part three, your people. And part four are your processes and your systems. So, this part, I have to say is so hard-earned for me.
Like, oh, I bled. I bled to create this. And so, I want you to appreciate it, not because I'm giving it to you and I want you to say thank you at all.
I want you to appreciate it because I want you to really understand that it works. If you do this, like, if you could understand what I went through to create this, to share it with you, you would do every single thing I said in here because it would make your life so much better. So, in this section, your processes and systems, we talk about statistics and measures and what you should be measuring and what you need stats on.
Creating a narrative, which is about your customer experience, the backstage processes you need to be able to deliver that customer narrative, how to do meetings.
Please watch that one. Come on. That one right there.
Please watch that one. Nobody wants to come to your meetings.
Everybody wants you to watch that one.
Watch that one. We talk about a process that I do in my business called Monday hour one and Friday hour done. And you can implement that very easily in your business, and you will love having that insight.
It's just so sexy.
I love it.
Monday hour one. I mean, as soon as you hear it, aren't you guys like, what's that? I want that.
I got to have it.
Yep. Then we talk about communication filters, manager filters, and then I give you my company manual. So you can look at it and take my company manual and just copy it like literally and put all your own stuff in it.
Like you can't copy it in the sense that like do everything I do because it won't work for your business, your personality. You need to change it, but the format of it, you can literally just take it and be like, what makes sense for me on this page? What makes sense for me on this page?
It's very simple. It's not like you think of a company manual, you think about like this big, heavy lawyer written thing. Mine's like, it only has third-grade words in it.
I know. I had a client who had his company manual. And he's like, do you think I should redo this?
And he sent it to me. And it was some boilerplate manual that somebody gave him to some HR company. And it had in it like, what happens if you have to donate a kidney?
Oh my goodness gracious.
It was so random. Like, come on. Yeah.
This isn't like your HR, your legal compliant manual. This is like, this is how we roll up in here, manual. And that's what this manual is for.
So we give that all to you. And I have to tell you guys, we went through this process, do we want to make this exclusive and expensive and offer it to people who have businesses that are beyond seven figures, because we knew that we could charge more for it if we did that, and we'd have a different level of person in there. And what I decided and what Kris agreed to, because she really works with people that have businesses that are at seven figures or higher.
And so that was a pretty logical thing for us to do, but I know there's so many of you that need this now before you get to seven figures. And what I said to Kris, I'm like, can we please give it to everyone? Because I want them to study this before they get there, so they don't get there and then have to go back and redo it.
And so we agreed to keep the price low, so all of you can access it and watch it. If you're at six figures, absolutely you need it. You can start implementing it right now and you'll need it for the future.
And it's kind of like getting your own MBA and entrepreneurship so you can have the foundation.
I wish, you know, because when people start their business, they spend a lot of time like hiring the people to help them market and sell and, you know, get leads and all that. And I don't dispute that that's important. I just want in the world for you to see that this was equally important to the success of your business.
And yeah, if you're making $200,000 and you have four contractors who help you, yeah, you need this content. You were not exempt from this. So, and in fact, I get a lot of my clients who have $8 million businesses and they're on the floor in a puddle trying to figure out how they got here and how do they unwind from this mess.
So if we can help you before that happens, yeah, so I'm all in. Let's everybody do the thing.
And I want to tell you that this is a way of thinking about your business too. Like everything we teach you in here is a way of thinking about it and thinking about it for scale. And so if you're someone that wants to have a seven-figure business, this is a beautiful opportunity for you to step into that role of someone who is managing their professional business, that's going to have employees, that's going to be able to scale it.
And so I really want to encourage you, don't be like, oh, I'm not there yet. Some of you aren't there yet. If you're brand new, this isn't a good fit for you.
But if you've been running your business and you have some revenue, this is a great opportunity for you to kind of expose yourself to what's coming. And for those of you who already have seven-figure businesses or close to seven figures, it should be required.
No brainer. Absolutely.
Kris is going to require this and include it in all of her coaching materials. It's just all the basics in one place. And I feel like we're going to be talking a lot more about this as more and more of you become more and more successful in your businesses.
These are the issues that are going to be coming up. And it's just like anything else, just like losing weight, just like quitting drinking, just like building anything. It all comes back to you.
It all comes back to, just like I was describing before, it'll bring out the worst in you, hopefully, so you can clean it up. And that's what entrepreneurship really has done for me. And that's why I keep doing it, is because it requires more of me and asks me to evolve into the next version of myself.
And so-
You know, I'd love that you said that, because I was just doing a webinar. And one of the things that I said to the attendees is, you know, one of the most damaging thoughts I think you can have as an entrepreneur is that somehow you're supposed to be good at this, like just naturally. Yeah.
And I should be better at managing. I should know how to run a business. Why?
How would you know how to do that?
How would you know that? You have to learn, just like you learned whatever the thing is that you're good at, that you now have a business around.
Well, and just having a business doesn't help you learn this.
No.
Right? Just running around, making your business survive doesn't help you learn this. You have to consciously go after building this foundation.
So, entrepreneurialmanagement.com, or you can go to the lifecoachschool.com. And for those of you who are interested in working with Kris inside of entrepreneurial management, she has more information about working with her, or you can always just go to krisplachy.com, krisplachy.com to find out more about her as well. I'm guessing that we'll probably have her back on the podcast to answer many of the questions that we're going to get from this program, but this program is available now.
You can go sign up now, and you should.
I'm so excited. Go get it.
Thank you for being on the podcast, Kris.
Thank you.
Talk to everybody next week. Take care. Bye.
Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it.
Join me over at thelifecoachschool.com/join.
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